"Ready to assemble" furniture is a rapidly growing segment of the furniture industry, due in part to its relatively low retail cost, but also to the small volume of space such furniture occupies in its pre-assembled state, which translates into reduced warehousing costs and larger inventories for popular items. Most commercially available "ready to assemble" furniture items, however, have drawbacks which limit their longevity and ease of assembly.
Despite its moniker, assembling most ready to assemble ("RTA") furniture is far from simple. Instead, the task is often time-consuming and frustrating. The consumer of most RTA furniture must toil with numerous bolts, threaded inserts and clips, and follow arduous step-by-step diagrams. All too often, the resulting piece of furniture is not well-suited to subsequent disassembly and re-assembly, as would be helpful or may be required for moving. Moreover, RTA furniture is often not sturdy enough to withstand rigorous use.
Conventional RTA construction methods also preclude the use of large, solid wood members--as may be used for table tops, for instance--due to problems with hygroscopic distortion as the equilibrium moisture content of the wood changes. Natural solid wood (as distinguished from composite and/or chemically treated wood materials) is typically sensitive to changes in environment; it expands with increases in temperature and/or humidity, and likewise contracts with reductions in these variables. Conventional RTA construction of tables, for instance, utilizes the table top as an integral structural member, where the top is rigidly mounted to the table legs and one or more aprons. Season to season, if so restrained, solid wood table tops are subjected to repeated expansion and contraction cycles which may cause the solid wood to distort (resulting in a `wobbly` table) or even to buckle and split. Without restraining such a solid wood table top, however, it is difficult to construct a table top sturdy enough to withstand the rigors of everyday use.
Hygroscopic distortion also presents problems with the construction of frame-and-panel doors. If a raised panel is used as an integral structural member and restrained from free expansion and contraction, then it may distort buckle and split with changes in environment. If such a panel is not sufficiently restrained, however, then the resulting door may appear to be shoddily constructed as the panel shifts within its surrounding panel frame when the door is operated.